


Bare Knuckle Cage Match

by bulbousalligator



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Werewolves, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Apocalyptic Society, Biological Weapons, Blood and Gore, Human Experimentation, Idiots in Love, M/M, Minor Character Death, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Rating May Change, Seriously fucked up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-25 04:54:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4947454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bulbousalligator/pseuds/bulbousalligator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone alive knows exactly what they were doing when the news broke.</p><p>Stiles had been in a small coffee shop by his apartment, mid order when the barista's attention drifted off to the side. Stiles remembers thinking at the time that she had been rude until he he had turned to see what had distracted her. </p><p>On the TV mounted in the corner of the shop, the news had been playing a blurry picture of a mob. The shaky camera zoomed in on a woman hunched over with her face pressed into a bundle of red blankets. </p><p>The Header above the video read "Cannibal Mother Goes Viral".</p><p>The barista whispered "Oh my God," under her breath.</p><p>Stiles had wondered what kind of sick person would stage this.</p><p>It wasn't until weeks later when riots were common and strict curfews came into effect that Stiles realised the blankets hadn't started out red.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Windows

Stiles always had a habit of doing the opposite of what he was told. When he was a kid he took it to the extreme, doing things he never even wanted to do in the first place (he didn't really want to climb the tree but when his mother told him not to hurt himself and to be careful when playing with his new friend it was really a no brainer, so he stood by his broken arm being his mother's fault, which had led to a very stressful meeting with the school's counselor). His father knew this when he told Stiles not to try to get to California after people started eating one another. So really this was all his father's fault. Stiles was freezing, tired, hungry, and terrified. Sleep was impossible when your hiding place was surrounded by shambling corpses.

Which isn't exactly out of place at college. Actually being dead changes the pace of things, what with being eaten alive suddenly a real and likely possibility.  
Still. Taking a shit should not be this difficult.

Baseball bat in hand, Stiles edged around the back of the random suburban house. Climbing the fence had been an ordeal. Some sight blocking wooden nonsense that had caused equal measures of excitement and worry. 

Pro: he would be hidden from the street as he fertilized the back garden.

Con: his sightlines are just as impaired.

Worth it. If he had to go another minute testing how strong his anus and will power were it was sure to have a very gross ending. Guaranteed.

After checking the doors and windows on the back of the house - intact and locked - Stiles hunkered down beside the shed and let loose the mother load of all apocalyptic shits. Honestly he was proud that he had been able to hold it in that long. A day of abdominal cramps and close calls was worth this shit induced nirvana. Even the after burn.  
In fact, Stiles figured the only thing better than this feeling would be some fresh water. He would literally kill for some water. Clear, clean water. It could be stale as all hell, taste like plastic or metal and rust, he didn't care. As long as he didn't end up with a parasite he was far from picky.

And a steak. He would kill for a steak. Or any kind meat. 

The only protein Stiles had had for near a week was peanut butter and a couple pieces of jerky. Which is definitely a contributing factor to his lack of water situation.  
Ass wiped, pants repositioned, and shit buried, Stiles stepped carefully to the picture window of what looked like a breakfast nook. He tapped lightly on the window, careful not to be loud enough to attract attention from the street.

The room itself looked untouched. Which is either a great sign or a shit one.

Option one: there isn't a rotting thing ambling around inside, knocking things over and generally making a mess of things. Which, awesome, no threat of death by psudo-cannibalism. Unless there is a rotting thing in there trapped in some way or another. Which would still be pretty awesome, if a bit more risky. Kind of par for the course.  
Option two: there is a living person, or people, inside maintaining a shred of normality in the Hellscape that is the recent world. Which means either: a) hospitality, or b) a sentient enemy unwilling to let anyone threaten what they have or leave with the knowledge of their sanctuary.

Option three: this particular house was ignored by looters for whatever reason unrelated to actual dead people or other survivors.  
Stiles had little hope in regards to the third option. He has never been that lucky or naive in his life.

After a good twenty minutes of periodic tapping on various windows with no movement, Stiles tried first the sliding door and then the windows.  
The window screen popped out just fine, but he couldn't pry the window itself open. 

Heaving a silent sigh, he drummed his twitchy fingers against the cool aluminium of his bat. He could smash the window in, attracting all sorts of unwanted attention, or he could risk damaging the cheap pocket knife he had slipped out of a dead woman's purse. It was small and rusted and likely hadn't been sharpened since it was purchased. Afraid as he was to use it, Stiles had been keeping it around I'm case of an emergency. 

The plan was to try to sharpen it once he found a stream or a pond or any other water formation. And a rock, but those were hardly hard to come by.  
Or some legit way to sharpen it, but the water and rock was the only way Stiles felt confident in, seeing as he fancied himself an outdoorsman when he was six and would spend his days reading about how to survive without modern technologies and practicing those skills. 

It had lasted a grand total of two weeks before he was on to something new (which had been comparing modern and antique tanks; something a lot less useful in surviving the current state of the world).

As is, the thing was a piece of shit. Even the original owner hadn't thought to use it for defence. Though that could very well have been because of panic or surprise or any number of other reasons.

None of that changed that the knife itself was stiff to open and close and couldn't make a cut. Stabbing would be possible with enough force (and decomposition), but past that it's only purpose was a comforting weight in his pocket. 

So Stiles did what any reasonable adult would do. He smashed that window like he had a personal vendetta against it. And then he hopped the fence and smashed all the back windows of that house to hopefully get the attention faced at that house instead. 

But, like a dumb ass in his excitement and probably sleep deprivation, he forgot to even do a cursory check through the windows. 

So the hand that gripped the back of his shirt came as a bit surprise.

The scream that tore from Stiles' throat, he would later claim, was eighty percent shock and only twenty percent fear.


	2. Unhinged

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, so reasons why this is stupidly late!
> 
> I think I posted chapter two like two weeks after I posted chapter one originally, but I really hated it. I'd put in another character way too early because I wanted to just shove the story into high gear but it ruined the flow I was going for (that I'm already struggling with as it is and that just screwed everything to all hell), so I took that down and started redoing it how I had wanted in the first place. Totally still don't have it right but I'm a scootch drunk and I've put it off way to long anyway, so fuck it. (I also told a couple people I could post it tonight and I don't want to make myself a liar)
> 
> I've also been working on getting my high school diploma before college starts- ah, the life of a procrastinating high school drop out.
> 
> Before that even started, my laptop gave up on working. Which it had already started to do when I posted chapter one but now it doesn't even load more than one web page at a time and even then it's kind of a gamble on whether the whole page was going to load at all. So! Last week I finally managed to get it to stay on long enough (the battery lasts 15 minutes and the port for the charger cable is loose so it only registers sometimes with some hardcore cable gymnastics bullshit) to get all my files off it and onto my eternal hard drive.
> 
> So here we are at last!
> 
> I'm also changing the rating from Explicit to Mature, since the scenes I had planned for originally probably wont work for what I have planned now for the rest of the fic. Which is still subject to change, so keep and eye out for that I guess. I'll probably say in an authors' note the chapter before I change it if I ever do, and if I remember.
> 
> This was also supposed to be a lot longer but it's already midnight and I want to post this now so the next chapter will probably be a lot longer, but I make no promises because I suck.
> 
> No beta, so any and all mistakes are mine.

He couldn't breathe. There was a surprisingly tight grip on his hair that would normally be a pretty fucking huge deal, but- the neck of his shirt was pulled tight against his throat and he couldn't breathe.

  
The deep rasping breaths in his ear really did absolutely nothing to help- just added to the coiled panic behind his ribs. His vision blurring, ears ringing with it. Copper on his tongue where his teeth sliced through in his surprise.

It was actually a little funny, Stiles had to admit. The dead thing can breathe better than the living thing. Talk about irony.

 _Was it irony?_ Stiles wondered. _May as well call it that._

All Stiles wanted, has wanted for the past sixteen or so, at best guess, hours was some rest. This whole situation was just very inconvenient. And quite frankly more than a little disgusting.

 Nothing quite compares to the feeling of chilly wet breath and the stench of rotten intestines being exhaled in a halo of stench around Stiles’ head. No sir. It really elevated the whole experience from 'kind of gross and dangerous' to 'abso-fucking-lutely vile and terrifying as all hell, what the actual fuck'.

But all of this was fine. Stiles could handle this. He had gotten out of much worse, lately. He just needed to solve one problem, and then the next, and so on until there were no more problems left to solve and he could rest. Finally rest.

So, clever. He had to be clever. What did he have to use? Well, nothing. The bat tucked under his arm was nothing but a comforting weight since swinging it blind behind himself around his head would do nothing to help. The rusted shut pocket knife was useless.

Heaving deep, calming breaths, as well as he could manage what with being choked with his own shirt, Stiles tried desperately to reign in his thoughts and come up with some crazy idea to get out of this shit show.

He could only come up with one thing. And it was the opposite of clever. It was dumb and reckless and dangerous but Stiles was getting dizzy so it was this or pass out and get eaten. So this is it. This is all there is.

He dropped everything. Everything being his baseball bat, which rolled away a bit, since all his other things were still in his pack in the other backyard. _That’s probably fortunate_ , Stiles thought. _Maybe_.

Taking off his shirt was difficult and painful, and to be honest Stiles isn't quite sure how he managed it. Most of his recollection of those long moments were flailing limbs and his desperate scratching fingers around his own neck. But a lucky twist here, some missing hair there, and he could breathe again. His face burned; probably rug burn and bruises. Definitely the rush of blood back to his face and the head rush from his sudden gasping breaths bringing enough oxygen beautifully, thankfully, wonderfully back into Stiles’ lungs.

He was also fucking cold. Shouldn't be high on his list of priorities, but his mind went off on its own and compiled a useless list of shit that could go wrong due to that missing article of clothing. Illness, sunburn, more available skin to bite.

Which is so not the problem right now, but brought a hysterical giggle bubbling over Stiles' lips all the same.

He needed to focus on the disgusting hand still clutching his hair. He knew this.

Still clutching? Yes. His shirt was bunched up around the rotting wrist and draped behind him, brushing his bare back.

Trying to pull together some form of concentration or focus or anything was like trying to catch a fly in midair. It just wasn't working. There were a few moments where, yes, he was so sure he had managed, but they we're false alarms.

So fuck plans. Who needs plans? Uselessly trying to wedge his own hand under the rotting one gripping his hair like a vice wasn't working out. Prying the fingers open was equally effective.

Forgoing safety, Stiles closed his eyes; he could see fuck all anyway and for some reason it worked in the movies so it’s time for a real world test. He reached blindly behind himself to grab onto the forearm of the thing trying to rip his scalp from his head, and hoped he was the luckiest man in the world and didn't get bitten.

When his had had a good grip, and thank fuck for that, he pressed a foot against the wall and pushed with all his strength and weight. The desperate hope that the dead asshole would come out the window after him and lose its grip on the tumble out so Stiles would have more room and a higher chance bashing its stupid asshole brains it.

There was equally as likely as just giving it a better chance to tear out his throat with its teeth.

But Stiles was the luckiest dumbass in all the land, obviously. Instead of flipping the corpse out the window like he had assumed would happen in the haze of the moment, only the arm came. Ripped right from the socket with a disgusting squelching, ripping, snapping sound.

Flinging himself away from the house and flailing about until the fingers we're finally free from the tangle of Stiles hair, Stiles spun about and catalogued a few things in rapid succession.

One: the rotting zombie asshole had no teeth. How lucky was that?

Two: there were three more behind that one with mouths full of teeth being blocked by the guy who either never saw a dentist in his entire life or was some sort of victim of either torture or had a moment of clarity when he realised he was turning. Who cares, Stiles is seriously the luckiest man in the world.

Three: his face was covered in dirt and grime, and if he hadn’t been bruised there before he most certainly was now.

Four: there were three nasty scratches just below Stiles' right wrist that burned like a mother.

Not so lucky after all. Fuck.

Unsure whether or not scratches actually turn someone- movies and comics had never been able to agree on this particular scenario, and even if they did Stiles had no real world experiences in regards to zombie scratches to draw from- but either way the chances of some zombie washing their hands ever in their not-life is pretty fucking slim. There is a one hundred per cent chance that Stiles has some kind of bacterial bullshit infection that is just going to ruin his week, and he is calling that now.

As Stiles sat there on his ass in the backyard of some house in the middle of some suburb in Kansas, for the first time since this mess started, he had the discouraging terrible awful thought that he was going to die. Here. In Kansas. And now Stiles officially hates Kansas.

Fuck Kansas.

This sucks.

 

 

His injuries became very obvious to him as he climbed back over the fence into house number one’s backyard. With the adrenaline wearing off, all that was left was dirt and pain. And of course the blood.

Stellar.

After climbing in the window, using a sweater it was too hot to wear but had been a nice pillow substitute many a desperate night as a guard from the broken glass, Stiles unlocked the back door but left it closed with his pack beside it in case the house was less safe than it seemed and he needed to make a speedy get-away.

With a tea towel tied over the stupid cuts on his wrist and bat in hand, Stiles did a quick sweep of the house- starting on the main floor and working up until he was sure there were no surprises, and frankly he was overjoyed there was no basement to clear as well.

Door re-locked and window barricaded, Stiles sat at the kitchen table with the first aid kit he had found in the upstairs bath spread out and got to work cleaning, disinfecting, and patching it up. The disinfecting had three steps: soaking in medical alcohol and rinsing, soaking in hydrogen peroxide and rinsing, and a layer of Polysporin under the bandages. Because fuck infections.

Fuck everything.

The aching itch was a constant reminder that his life could end at any moment; a reminder that Stiles let himself brood and obsess over while he ate what felt like his first real meal in months.

The first time Stiles scavenged through a kitchen he had felt like he was invading someone’s home. It was like the first time he went to Scott’s house and had been left alone in the kitchen while he ran his bag up to his room with the instructions to grab a snack. The panic that settled low in his chest as he stood alone in a strange house, in a strange kitchen where nothing was where he expected it to be, with the expectation to find food had been more than six year old Stiles could comfortably handle. He had ended up just standing in front of the open fridge wondering if all the juice was up for grabs or if some was just for Melissa.

He had still been standing there frowning with goosebumps on his arms and a frown on his face when Scott tumbled back into the room rambling about the games he had that they could play after they finished off their homework as he bumped the necessary books on the table.

Scott hadn’t said anything about the lack of snacks. He had just continued to talk as he pulled out bags of pretzels and chips and school snacks while Stiles held up jugs of juice for a nod of approval.  
The next time Stiles had been over he hadn’t hesitated; he had dropped his backpack on the kitchen table and wandered to the fridge without pausing in his debate with Scott.

It had been like that the first few times Stiles had searched through a house for anything useful. By the fourth house that feeling had faded, and he treated every house like he had been there multiple times before.  
  
So here he was, sitting in a house in Middle America, eating cold soup from the can and snacking on canned fruit that he had drained (the syrup filled an empty water bottle he had found in a cupboard next to match boxes he also pocketed) and dumped into a serving bowl. It was the first sweet thing he had tasted since he passed through Illinois, where he had found a package of Swedish Fish and a can of Sprite in a gas station. That had been a good day. He had almost had his ankle ripped out by the blackened teeth of what had once been the pump attendant, but it had been so worth it. The gummies had gotten stuck in his teeth and coated his tongue in a lasting layer of sugar so he had tasted the treat until he had fallen asleep that night.

Now with the fruit syrup coating his tongue, he felt normal again. It didn’t matter that he was still four states away from his father. It didn’t matter that he could be dying at this very moment from some sort of severe bacterial infection. It didn’t matter that he could be killed and eaten while he slept tonight.

Right now, Stiles was not hungry. For the first time in three weeks, he was full. And in the morning again he would eat his fill. For at least two days, Stiles would feel more human again.

For now, after he finished his soup, Stiles filled his pack with some cans of food in case something went horribly wrong in the night and he had to bail. He buckled the new first aid kit to the shoulder straps while he was at it.

 

 

Upstairs again, Stiles set himself up in the master bedroom. Which really only consisted of hanging heavy blankets over the sheer curtains in the large bay window so he could light a candle once it was dark without attracting more unwanted attention than he already had.

Before settling down for a well-deserved rest, since Stiles would in no way be able to relax while the street was so active, he set out to search the upstairs rooms more thoroughly.

The first room was a nursery. Stiles didn’t open that door. He rested his hand on the door knob for a moment before deciding there would be nothing worth venturing back in there for. There were no blood stains, and there was no corpse. But the chances of the baby who used to call that room home was still alive was small, and Stiles was already feeling lethargic enough without that reminder.  
  
The next room after that was what looked like a teenager’s bedroom, with posters of Van Gogh artworks and superheroes covering the walls.

This one Stiles could stomach. Out of this room Stiles took the diary he found taped to the back of the desk while picking up a pen he knocked over, a pack of cigarettes he found in a pair of boots in the closet, and a couple shirts that looked about his size. When he tried one on it was a bit too tight and fell an inch above the waist of his jeans, but it was better than nothing.

He took pretty much everything from the bathroom; from a guest toothbrush and some toothpaste, to the toilet paper, to a spare box of Star Wars Band-Aids.

The home office had nothing useful, but Stiles took an armful of books and a metal elephant figurine that fit in the palm of his hand. He wasn’t sure why he took it exactly, just that the weight of it was somehow comforting as the metal warmed in his hand.

Back in the master bedroom, Stiles piled blankets and pillows in the corner farthest from but still facing the newly barricaded door with the books spread out in front of him. There were candles close for when it got dark, but for the moment he picked up the first book his hands touched and cracked it open.

He was fast asleep with the book hugged tightly to his chest before he had a need for the candles.

 

Stiles woke half way through the next day, brushed his teeth, and sat on the master bed with the diary sitting in front of him.

Legs crossed and hands in his lap, Stiles stared silently at the elegant leather bound book.

Whatever was written in this book was a world away from what life was like now. As far as Stiles was concerned, this was a history book. The chronicles of a life before dead people eating living people became commonplace.

Stiles took a swig from his water bottle.

He opened the book.


End file.
